FISH HAVE FAVORITE HAUNTS. 



ONE strange feature of this sea 

 life of the tropics is the regular 

 recurrence of migratory swarms 

 of fish of very small size that 

 return in huge numbers year after year 

 with such absolute regularity that the 

 natives calculate on the event on a 

 certain date in each year and even 

 within an hour or two of the day, says 

 a writer in Lippincott 's Magazine. One 

 such swarm of fish forms the occasion 

 of an annual holiday and feast at 

 Samoa. The fish is not unlike the 

 whitebait for which the English Thames 

 has so long been celebrated and each 

 year it arrives in Samoa on the same 

 day in the month of October, remains 

 for a day, or at the most two days and 

 then disappears entirely until the same 

 day the following year. Why it comes, 

 or whence, no curious naturalist has yet 

 discovered, nor has anybody traced its 

 onward course when it leaves the 

 Samoan group, but the fact is unques 

 tionable that suddenly, without notice, 

 the still waters of the lagoon which 

 surround each island within the fring 

 ing reef become alive with millions 

 of fishes, passing through them for a 

 single day and night and then disap 



pearing for a year as though they had 

 never come. 



A visit to Samoa enabled me to see 

 this strange phenomenon for myself 

 and to witness the native feast by 

 which it is celebrated year by year. I 

 had been in Samoa for a month and in 

 that month I had enjoyed almost a sur 

 feit of beauty. I had coasted the 

 shores of its islands, I had bathed in 

 the warm, still waters of its lagoons, 

 fringed to seaward by the white reef, 

 on which the ocean broke in golden 

 spray, and to landward by the silver 

 beach of coral sand, flecked with the 

 tremulous shadows of the swaying 

 palms. I had climbed with my native 

 guide the abrupt hills, covered with 

 dense forests of tropical luxuriance, 

 through the arcades of which I caught 

 glimpses of the flash and luster of the 

 ocean's myriad smiles, and again we 

 had plunged into deep valleys among 

 the hills, where little headlong streams 

 murmur under the shade of the 

 widespreading bread-fruit trees and 

 wave the broad leaves of the great 

 water lilies of the Pacific coast islands. 

 This visit of the fishes came as a climax 

 of wonders. 



SILLIEST BIRD IN THE WORLD. 



DODO is the Portuguese name 

 for simpleton, and it is given 

 to the silliest bird that ever 

 lived. 



Three hundred years ago, when the 

 Portuguese first visited the Island of 

 Mauritius, they found a great number 

 of these birds. They were about the 

 size of a large swan, blackish gray in 

 color and having only a bunch of 

 feathers in place of a tail, and little, 

 useless wings. More stupid and fool 

 ish birds could not be imagined. They 

 ran about making a silly, hissing noise 

 like a goose, and the sailors easily 

 knocked them over with their paddles. 



They couldn't fly, they couldn't swim, 

 they couldn't run at any great speed, 

 and as for fighting, they were the 

 greatest cowards in the world. They 

 were much too stupid to build a nest, 

 and so they dropped an egg in the 

 grass and went off and let it hatch as 

 best it could. Added to all these 

 things its flesh was fairly good to eat, 

 and the Portuguese pursued it so 

 steadily for food that in less than a 

 century's time there wasn't a single 

 dodo left in the world. It was quite 

 too silly and stupid to save its own 

 life, and so it became extinct. 



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